Our latest project, Roaming River was a bit of a different one for us. Mostly because, it doesn’t involve any older people, as it is intended for SEN schools to use with children. We’d just finished making Marianas Song when Sunderland Culture offered us a commission to make another multi-sensory film and we were buzzing to use everything that we’d just learned making Marianas Song on another project.

The working world was a bit more normal by then, so we didn’t have months on end to dilly dally around like we did with Marianas Song so we got to work. We asked Dani Giddins to work with us again from the start and she had the pleasure of hearing our early ideas this time - we always sound a little off the wall to begin with before we scale things back. We played with the idea of creating a piece set indoors to begin with but the new restrictions had us out in the great outdoors again and overall were really pleased they did.

Through Roaming River we wanted to explore imagination, as it is such a huge part of our participatory arts practice. The story follows a young boy called River on his adventures in the forest. The audience is invited in to River’s world, to join him and his best friend Walnut in their den within the forest where he plays. We get a glimpse of River’s day to day as his imagination allows his to drift from one moment of curiosity and wonder to the next. 

We cast Jack Lloyd as River who so brilliantly encapsulated Rivers charm. Matt Tuckey joined us to record and design sound for the piece. The overall style was different to Marianas Song as we were trying to create a sense that the audience was right there with River, so this created a whole new challenge for us. Filming day came around and I think we spoke more about the weather that day than we have ever before. It’s weird how little you think about the weather as a theatre maker, but as a film maker you are checking your weather app like a nervous twitch! Despite the weather, making Roaming River with such a skilled and generous creative team was great learning and we’ll take so much from it.

Roaming River comes with a multi-sensory activity pack that allows schools to use multi-sensory props throughout the film to support to storytelling and ideas of how to use the film as part of a longer sensory workshop. The film and PDF download will be available on Sunderland Culture’s website from May 2021.